


one thousand origami cranes

by QSoC



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Gen, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-17 03:04:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13067781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QSoC/pseuds/QSoC
Summary: Back at the beginning of the century, when still barely five hundred people had broken Earth's atmosphere rather than the nearing millions of today, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Association had a task that they set to new candidates.





	one thousand origami cranes

Back at the beginning of the century, when still barely five hundred people had broken Earth's atmosphere rather than the nearing millions of today, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Association had a task that they set to new candidates. During a week of constant observation in an isolation habitat with the rest of their recruits, they would have to make one thousand origami cranes.

The idea (asides from testing their ability to be stuck in isolation with 19 others for a week) was to see how they could cope with the tedium of a repeated task, over and over, for an extended period of time, without the quality and consistency of their work dropping. A thousand cranes within a week - after which, each candidate's attempts were taken away, examined by psychologists and other specialists looking for any fault, any wobbly fold or a half-bothered pinch that showed a weakness. "Deterioration of accuracy shows impatience under stress," they said. Not good for astronauts. Do it right, do it perfect, exactly, a thousand times over.

The idea came from an ancient Japanese belief, a prophesy, if you like, that said that any individual who made a thousand origami cranes would be granted a wish by the gods, or a lifetime of good luck. I'm not sure if any potential astronauts achieved this while training with JAXA, or even believed it, but I do know that good luck is exactly the kind of thing astronauts need when hurtling through a vacuum at hundreds of meters per second. So it wouldn't hurt to try.

* * *

 

John Tracy believed it. Or at least he used to, when his mother first told him the story as he sat at the corner of one of those big fancy parties where the adults got to drink special brightly coloured drinks. It was too loud, everyone too tall, and it was easier to just sit and watch and smile when gestured to by his parents or brothers.

"It's something you can do, if you like, to keep your hands moving and your mind focused when it's too busy to think straight," she said, folding a napkin slowly enough for him to follow. "I think you'll be good at it! I know there are lots of times, John, when the world may get too loud. This will help you stop and listen. And anyway, just think of it as practice for when - if, if you work hard! - you go to space. You can't be relying on wishes from gods, you hear?"

Months went past, years. He made a hundred origami cranes. More brothers arrived, and parents were lost. Lots of origami cranes were made that year - but it was practise. Three-hundred origami cranes. Did you get some luck, at least, for any cranes that you made? He didn't feel very lucky, even when his tiniest brother, the newest brother, paused his wet and snotty cries to reach for the bright red bird waved above his face. John knew paper and wet didn't really mix, but maybe he wasn't the only one destined for space. Maybe one day he'd need to teach him how to make the cranes too.

He didn't keep all of them - that would have been impossible, there were so many - and besides, some of them weren't really made to last. Seven-hundred origami cranes, made out of receipts and bottle labels, spread around the ranch, across the city, all over the island. There were a few favourites - a tin foil one as a challenge from Virgil, or the one he made while sat in the screaming crowds the day Gordon won his first medal in the junior league. These few were kept, in a locked box beneath his desk - these were important, he thought, extra lucky ones in the hundreds and hundreds of lost cranes and worth keeping (although they still only counted as one).

Years later, at the Academy, John waited for the day he would be called upon to make a thousand origami cranes. But things had changed in the last fifty years, and astronauts no longer needed to make the simple repetitive checks each day like they used to. Testing this ability didn't seem worth it any more - he spent his days recognising the affects of hypoxia, practising escape drills from underwater boxes, writing code for a rover that hadn't even been built yet. He gave a talk on a distant quasar system, it's discovery through radio waves, spoke of the importance of clear communication in both human and interstellar relations. The universe is noisy, unbarably so, so you've just gotta figure out what bits to listen to first. What bits are the most important.

The night before his final interview he phoned his brothers, listened to them bicker and laugh a thousand miles away, and made sixty-seven cranes.

* * *

 

Sound doesn't travel in space. It's a vacuum, so there's nothing for the sound waves to vibrate so they can get to your ears. It's doesn't mean it isn't noisy though. There's always the hum of a machine somewhere, the hiss of an airlock, the rush of the blood in your ears and the breath in your lungs. They're the sounds that remind you how small and fragile the human body is inside the vast emptiness of space. That's ok though - origami cranes can fly in zero gravity, so it's fun for them too, if you need to fold them.

**Author's Note:**

> JAXA's task is a real thing - you can find out more about it here! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/7968400/The-trials-of-the-modern-day-astronaut.html
> 
> This is my first forray into TBs fic, and was entirely written on trains to and from London - final edits were made after a particularly emotional trip to the Science Museum, and it's unbeta'd, so please let me know of any errors!


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